


The Struggle Ever Renew’d

by valancy_joy



Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: Community: lewis_challenge, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-06
Updated: 2013-01-06
Packaged: 2017-11-23 20:21:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/626145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valancy_joy/pseuds/valancy_joy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This time it’s James’ turn to sit by a hospital bed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Struggle Ever Renew’d

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dracofiend](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dracofiend/gifts).



> I hadn’t intended for this to be hurt/comfort … but hoping the comfort more than makes up for the hurt! Expertly beta-d by the marvelous **carolyn_claire** who ably roots out my sentence fragments and wonky commas! Thanks bb!

__O ME! O life!... of the questions of these recurring;__  
Of the endless trains of the faithless—of cities fill’d with the foolish;  
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)  
Of eyes that vainly crave the light—of the objects mean—of the struggle ever renew’d;  
Of the poor results of all—of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me;  
Of the empty and useless years of the rest—with the rest me intertwined;  
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?

Answer.

That you are here—that life exists, and identity;  
That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.  
\--Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 166

James suspects that the sound of Lyn on the phone when he calls her to say Robbie was hurt and in hospital is going to haunt his dreams for a long while to come. If he ever decides to sleep again. Nor does he really want to remember the looks on his fellow officers’ faces when he'd fished Lewis out of the water and dragged him up the riverbank.

This time it's his turn to sit by the bedside and listen to Robbie wheeze, hooked up to IVs full of antibiotics and oxygen tubes and all manner of sensors and machines. The doctor comes by, but there are phone calls and paperwork and some yelling before she'll tell James anything.

It's Laura who holds him up during those first hours and days. Who translates the doctor's explanations. Who takes the phone from his hand and explains it all over again to Lyn. Who brings him a change of clothes and a sandwich. Who sits with Robbie so he can go outside and smoke and stare at the leaden grey sky and breathe fresh air. Who distracts him with endless games of Words with Friends in the days to come when she can't be there by his side. He suspects she lets him win, most of the time. He's ashamed at how grateful he is for that just now.

The first night, Robbie wakens, then sleeps, slipping back and forth between the two states, and James sits by his side and waits. Although he's partially sedated, Robbie's restless. The nurses don't seem overly concerned, but they're not the ones sitting by Robbie's bedside hour after hour. James slips his hand around Robbie's at one point, an attempt mostly to keep the IV in place, but it seems to help a little. So James pulls his chair closer to the bed and winds their fingers together, tries to calm his friend with the gentle sweep of a thumb across his wrist.

He remembers some Hospice work he'd done back in the seminary, how some patients responded to the sound of another's voice. He's got volumes of verse, prose, and scripture in his head, but he can't think of a single word of any of it now. All he can think to do is to fall back on the solid familiarity of reporting the facts to his boss. He keeps his voice soft, trying not to disturb the patients in the other beds nearby.

"They've got you doped to the gills right now, Sir. Please try and rest. It'll be no comfort to you, I suppose, but you might like to know the bastard who did this to you turned the gun on himself. Good riddance, if I do say so myself. But it did give me the time to haul you out of the river. It's funny, the things that stick with you. You won't remember, being unconscious at the time, but when I hauled you up onto the river bank, there was a tree there. Bright yellow leaves. They must have all fallen overnight from that hard frost we had. Because all around the tree in a circle was this ring of golden leaves. As eager as I was for the ambulance service to get there, I sort of hated for all those people to trample through them and make a mess of it all. Was lovely in its way." And terrible, he thinks, but, like so many of his thoughts, he keeps this one to himself.

He thinks of that riverbank, of the dizziness, the breathlessness of pulling Robbie from the water, leaves swirling around them, and him falling to his knees and praying softly, over and over. Of bending over him and listening for the beat of his heart and the sheer hot joy of the sound. Thinks he may both love and hate that shade of yellow now locked in his mind as some combination of joy and terror.

He pushes this fragment of memory to one side. This is no time for him to get lost in his head.

He does a lot of sitting and waiting over the next days. Laura tells him sleep is the best medicine, and the nurses help that along with regular doses of this and that in the IV. Robbie's sometimes awake enough to talk to, although he doesn't always make a lot of sense, but James humors him. He thinks turnabout is fair play, even though it hurts him someplace deep down inside when, late into the night, Robbie calls for Val, when he talks to her as if she's there, as though they're home together and making dinner. He hears a whispered confession about whether it’s terrible to admit that Lyn was just awful in that school play, is witness to the pride in Robbie's voice as he describes his son's winning goal at a football match. Fevered pillow talk from a man, a loving husband, from a time before James met him.

But in a few days the fevered dreams end, and the man James knows is back. He's weak and ever restless but recovering.

James goes back to work. He doesn't want to, but he does what is required of him. His off-hours, however, find him back in the Radcliffe, sitting by Robbie's bedside.

He tries reading to Robbie. Dickens first, but Robbie grumbles about there being too many blasted names to make sense of, so the next night James switches to a childhood favorite.

"I was born in the Year 1632, in the City of York, of a good Family, tho' not of that Country, my Father being a Foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull," he begins, and Robbie, half asleep, smiles. Together they are shipwrecked on literary shores.

Sometimes James' eyes get tired, and he closes the book and tries to think of things to talk about. On the fifth night his eyes are drooping, and the whir of the machines coupled with the tale of a shipwrecked castaway brings back a small memory.

"When I was about six, the family went to the seaside. Most days I was packed off with a pail and a shovel that Scarlett had given me, and strict instructions to keep myself out of the water. Which, wasn't that my childhood right there? Take a kid to the sea and say "don't you get wet." But, anyway, I loved it. It won't surprise you that I was used to being alone. And I could make as many sandcastles as I wanted. Or walk along the beach and pick up shells. Since I wasn't allowed to go in the water, I used to chase the surf as it rolled in and out along the beach, feeling the cool sand between my toes and loving the feel of the water tickling my feet. It was fun to be stretching the boundaries and limits. I wasn't going IN the water, was I? Some local boys would come around now and then and kick over my sand castles, but I didn't really mind. You can always rebuild a sandcastle, can't you? On one of the last days I was there I piled up all the sand I could into a big mound and then knocked it down myself, just to see what it was like. And I remember thinking, even then, as little as I was, that knocking over sandcastles was pretty boring. So I gathered up my pail and shovel and went and chased the waves around some more. There's something soothing about the ebb and flow of water, you know, Sir. Always felt that way. Even rivers have that same kind of push and pull. Steady and comforting. Like our bells, always there in the background, telling you things."

Head tipped back, eyes closed, James startles when he feels a hand on his arm. Robbie awkwardly curls his fingers in the fabric of James’ shirt sleeve and with a little tug to get his attention their eyes meet. James tries to hold his friend’s gaze, but can’t help looking away from Robbie’s too bright and knowing expression. Neither of them can bring themselves to speak. But for all the tension, it’s still somehow a comfortable silence.

Nights when Robbie nods off, James slips worn volumes of Donne or Whitman out of his bag, sometimes reading passages aloud, softly, as Robbie sleeps: soft words to soothe the sick and weary. He's pretty sure he's reading to himself as much as to his friend, at this point.

Laura wakes him one morning with a cheery greeting, a large coffee, and a bacon roll. James untangles himself from where he’d fallen asleep, head pillowed on his arms, propped on the side of Robbie’s bed and blushes as he picks up the slim battered volume of poetry fallen at his feet and tucks it back into his bag.

Robbie improves and is weaned off the sedatives. He's impatient to go home but still weak from the blood loss and the surgery to remove the bullet. So, a week on from the shooting, James still sits by his side. Today his hands are busy silently slicing a pear into sections with a pearl-handled pen knife. Lewis had snorted the first time James had handed him a sliver of pear but had at last given in with a shrug. He watches James slice through the crisp fruit, each piece balanced between his thumb and the silver bright blade of the knife. It's unexpectedly soothing, and Hathaway nods back at him and sucks a bit of juice from his thumb.

They watch some Australian cricket match on the telly, and James is silently happy that Robbie has enough strength to yell at the players.

"Have you played much cricket, sir?" he asks, testing to see how far he can wind Robbie up.

"I've bowled. A bit," Robbie replies with a gleam of fun sparking in his eyes.

"Can't say I ever thought of you joining in with the white linen and Pimm's Cup crowd," James tells him.

"Was on a college team once, I'll have you know. Very nearly went to France with them an' all."

"You never did," James says skeptically.

"Hidden depths, me," Robbie says and taps the side of his nose conspiratorially.

"Clearly, I don't know you at all, Sir," James says saucily as they settle back to watch the match.

"Oh, I think you do, lad. I think you do," Robbie replies softly. And for the first time in a week, James smiles.


End file.
